BEIJING – The number of children in China sickened by dairy products tainted with the banned industrial chemical melamine has jumped to nearly 53,000, the government said Sunday as it vowed to crack down on those responsible for one of China’s worst food safety scandals in years.
More than 80 percent of the 12,892 children hospitalized in recent weeks were 2 years old or younger, the Health Ministry said in a statement posted on its Web site late Sunday. Four children have died and 104 of the hospitalized children are in serious condition.
Another 39,965 children received outpatient treatment at hospitals and were considered “basically recovered,” the ministry said.
Attention male cellphone users of reproductive age: Take that phone out of your pocket. Information published today suggests that the radio-frequency energy released by cellphones decreases sperm quality in men.
Last year, researchers from the Cleveland Clinic released a study showing that men who used their cellphones for more than four hours a day had significantly lower sperm quality than men who used their phones for less time. That study, however, did not reveal what might be causing this association. The new study by the same research group, published online today in Fertility & Sterility, took sperm samples from 32 men and divided the samples into two parts for a test group and a control group. The test group specimens were placed an inch from a 850 MHz cellphone that was in talk mode. Measurements taken after the one-hour exposure showed that the sperm exposed to the cellphone contained higher levels of harmful free radicals and a decreased amount of protective antioxidants compared with the unexposed sperm. These factors caused a decline in the sperm’s function and motility and in the overall health of the sperm. However, there was no significant difference in damage to the DNA of the exposed cells.
Drugs to treat osteoporosis are not without possible side effects, most notably a widely publicized condition in which jawbone tissue dies.
Pun absolutely intended, Dr. Thomas B. Dodson explains, ” ‘Bisphosphonate-related osteonecrosis of the jaw’ is a mouthful.” His expertise is another mouthful — oral and maxillofacial surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital. He’s an expert on . . . let’s just call it BRONJ.
The problem has been linked to drugs called bisphosphonates, ranked 10th in U.S. sales among all drug categories, according to IMS Health, which analyzes pharmaceutical and healthcare markets. Most cases come after someone has been treated for cancer with potent, intravenous forms of the drugs. About 1 in 10 cancer patients treated with IV bisphosphonate develops the jaw problem.
BEIJING (AFP) – A total of 1,253 Chinese children have been sickened by contaminated milk powder and 53 of them are in serious condition, the health ministry said Monday, vastly increasing previous estimates.
“As many as 10,000 infants may have drunk the contaminated Sanlu milk powder,” the health ministry said in a press release.
It said that 340 children remained in hospital, and that out of these 53 were in a serious condition.
BEIJING (Reuters) – China on Monday reported one more infant death from tainted milk powder, bringing to two the number of babies killed in an expanding scandal that drew an official product recall only after New Zealand blew the whistle.
The latest death blamed on infant milk powder made by the Sanlu Group occurred in Gansu province, a poor region in the northwest that was also home to the only other fatality blamed on chemical-laced milk, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
China has questioned 78 people in a health scare involving tainted baby milk formula linked to the death of one infant and the development of kidney stones in dozens of others across the country, state media said on Friday.
China’s quality watchdog also launched a nationwide probe into all baby milk powders as a local dairy producer admitted its formula had been contaminated with melamine, a toxin linked to the deaths and illness of thousands of pets in the United States last year.
Authorities were investigating whether the tainted milk had caused the death of one baby in the northwestern province of Gansu and development of kidney stones in more than 50 others there and in other provinces this year.
(AP) China’s government vowed “serious punishment” on Friday after a major dairy recalled 700 tons of milk powder linked to a rash of illnesses in infants, and the case reignited fears about Chinese product safety.
U.S. authorities warned American consumers to avoid all Chinese infant formula, though a New Zealand company that owns a stake in the Chinese producer said it believed none of the powder was exported from China.
Sanlu Group Co., China’s biggest milk powder producer, ordered the recall after more than 50 babies suffered kidney stones and one died, the official Xinhua News Agency said. It said Sanlu’s tests found it was tainted with melamine, a chemical used in plastics.
A vitamin found in meat, fish and milk may help stave off memory loss in old age, a study has suggested.
Older people with lower than average vitamin B12 levels were more than six times more likely to experience brain shrinkage, researchers concluded.
The University of Oxford study, published in the journal Neurology, tested the 107 apparently healthy volunteers over a five-year period.
Some studies suggest two out of five people are deficient in the vitamin.
The Simvastatin and Ezetimibe in Aortic Stenosis (SEAS) trial found out that the drug Vytorin, used to lower the levels of bad cholesterol, might increase the risk of developing cancer. However, the FDA said that doctors should continue to prescribe the drug, but should be careful and identify the eventual side effects that might appear and report them to the federal agency.
The trial discovered that patients who had been administered Vytorin did not present a lower risk of developing cardiovascular diseases compared to the ones who had been administered a placebo. On the other hand, the persons who took the drug were twice more likely to develop cancer than the other ones.
